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I Lied – More Comics – Avengers VS X-Men

Yup, so I totally lied. Baldfaced, even. Which makes sense, as I am very pale.

But I’m bringing you one more comic discussion before I (eventually, probably, hopefully) zero back in on entirely text-based books for a bit. Will I go with the epic-ly titled The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared? The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay? Maybe something else entirely that I’ve completely forgotten about?

You’ll just have to tune in to find out. For now, allow me to present Avengers VS X-Men.

I’m going to (hopefully) come back to fully credit everyone who worked on the book up above in the BOLD text box up there, but… there are a TON of people so… it may mean I come back with an edit a bit later.

Note: I didn’t. Seriously, a ton of really talented people (plus Jeph Loeb!) worked on the book, so if you’re interested in knowing everyone involved, you can check out the individual issue information over on Marvel’s website! Also, watch for spoilers if you haven’t read the series yet!

I’ve said before I don’t do superhero books. The more I say it, apparently, the less true it is. I’ve been taken in lately by Brian Michael Bendis’ take on the Marvel Universe. Ultimate Spider-Man. Avengers: Disassembled, House of M, Secret Wars, Secret Invasion, Dark Avengers.

I could go on.

Seriously, the guy’s written at least fifteen-thousand issues for Marvel in the last eight or so years. I’m not even exaggerating.

I’ve liked most of them, despite my near-complete lack of familiarity with Marvel continuity… so with this recent interest, I decided to go balls to the wall and take on Avengers VS X-Men.

I tried to read it with an open mind… as well as an open web-browser to make sense of things I was unfamiliar with. For instance:Q: Why is Colossus also The Juggernaut? A: Who cares! It looks cool!Q: Why is Charles Xavier walking? A: House of M… I think!
Q: Why is Magneto a good guy? A: I dunno… just roll with it!
Q: DA FUQ are they bringing back the Phoenix? A: May as well milk it for all you can get!

So… yeah. There’s a story to the comic… Sorta. The Phoenix Force is returning for Hope Summers… well, let’s not get too much into continuity, backstory, or confusing parentage here… But in House of M, all but about 200 mutants in the Marvel Universe lost their powers… Hope was the first mutant born after that catastrophe and she has the ability to channel and mimic other mutants’ abilities.

This makes her extraordinarily powerful.

Of course, the X-Men, led by Scott Summers\Cyclops, can’t let the Phoenix Force take control of Hope because then Cyclops would have another person in his life to cry about losing… so the X-Men prepare to defend Hope from the Phoenix.

On the other side of the coin, the Avengers find that Phoenix is coming to Earth and determine Hope to be the target. They want to place Hope in a place with MAXIMUM SECURITY to keep her safe from the Phoenix. Cyclops tells them to stuff it, Captain America gets pissed, and the fights begin.

That’s pretty much the whole story.

The rest of the story is basically built around shots like this:

Seriously. The trade collection has more than 500 pages and at least 400 of them are two-page spreads. OK, I exaggerate. 300. Most of the art is… decent overall, but it shows that they were punching out two issues a month since April. A lot of crowd scenes where the only people with detail are in the front row (and even then, some of it looks pretty weak).

But I think a lot of that comes down to the sheer amount of work to be done for the series. Overall, the work is satisfying… especially in the splash pages.

I will say that if you only read the twelve issues of the main story arc, you’re really missing out. The trade also collects a few issues of the AvX: Infinite series, the zero issue for the core series, and (most importantly) the VS series that was an off-shoot of the main series.

AvX VS was by far my favorite part of the whole run. Easily. The issues are filled with little “fun facts” throughout that make for a much lighter, funnier story. The battles are definitely in-line with the What If…? series Marvel’s been doing on and off since the late ’70s.

And #6? Well, a spoiler free review of that issue: Awesome in about six-thousand different ways. Maybe seven.

The series also introduced Marvel’s new tech thing called Marvel AR. You know… those codes that you’re supposed to scan with an app + your smartphone’s camera? No? Well… you and just about everyone else who owns a smartphone…

That said, they’re kinda cool. If you scan a page with the app, you’ll get different things… in some cases a video, in others the app will animate the page from pencils, to inks, to full-colors. Pretty cool, if a bit useless. Still, I applaud Marvel for trying to make an integration between the paper books and technology.

But… One of the AR codes near the end of the book (in the middle of a climactic scene no less!) links the viewer to a Robot Chicken-styled comedy video of “how it really began.” Prank phone calls, sugar in the gas tank… all that. Funny… but it really should have been placed near the start of the series, not the end.

Overall, I recommend this trade. As someone who has only been a fan of most of these characters for about five years, I had a lot of fun. I know some people who have been fans longer (and who no doubt know the characters better) didn’t enjoy it as much as I did…

But fuck them! I enjoyed it and since this is my blog, I’m gonna run with it and give it two big thumbs up! Seriously, you should see these behemoths…

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